


What if I say I shall not wait!

by middlemarch



Series: Season 3 That Never Was, Middlemarch Edition [1]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Deleted Scene, Difficult Decisions, Domestic, Espionage, F/M, Family Issues, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage, Mathematics, Medical School, Nurses & Nursing, Romance, Season 3, Some Fluff, as much as extension, in case I go for an episode 2, pivoting on the same theme, seems like my Season 3 premiere episode, though not really canon divergence, tried to sort of end on a series of question
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-14 21:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13598583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: There had been no argument and Aunt Agatha had given them her blessing. And yet, not everything was so simple.





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m so glad we didn’t wait,” she said. Her words had broken the companionable quiet of the sitting room, a gentle alarum disrupting Jed’s focus on the sheaf of French medical articles that had arrived earlier in the week from his old friend in Paris. Mary still held her pen, but had moved a little in her chair, half-facing him, half-turned to the proof she had been wrestling with since the sun had begun its early winter descent. Her hair was still neatly netted, her lace collar flat, but there were ink-stains on her cuffs and her finger-tips; she had lapsed into an abstracted state he’d begun to recognize over their meal of stewed chicken and dumplings and he’d fancied he could see the numbers sparkling in her dark eyes when he called her name.

“Wait for what?” he asked, setting the papers aside. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day, but she would claim them all if it were only up to him. The lion’s share, he’d amended when she’d challenged him for saying it aloud and laughed when she corrected him further: the lioness’s share. She did not begrudge him the hours of study and contemplation as Eliza had and he found her attitude made it the easiest thing to turn his attention to her.

“To be married. To be together like this,” she answered. She made a small, oblique gesture that took in the room with its few, treasured ornaments, its worn silk draperies at the long windows, the fire merry in the hearth, and the two of them and their work.

 _Like this_ , she said, and he wondered that she chose this moment as her reference. She might have said the same while they were nestled together on the sofa, reading aloud from the latest installment of Dickens arrived in Alexandria. Or in the breath between his kiss and hers, in the moonlight that turned the bleached linens to silver and Mary into a fairy queen, her embrace a beguilement he’d never seek to throw off, her voice soft and bold, gasping _more, more_ , meaning what she wanted and what she gave him. She might have said it when she handed him the brush to let him finish combing out her hair after her bath, her robe falling from her shoulders, her expression in the glass piquant and then dreamy under his touch. Or even when he stood at the door, unable to greet her because too many boys had died in his hands that day, the morphine running short, Henry Hopkins reduced to the simplest, unfinished prayer _Thy will Thy will_ , and laid her face against his back in his broadcloth coat, her hand pressed against his beating heart.

She might have said it when he brought her some little gift, a twist full of lemon humbugs or a nosegay. When she poured the tea into his cup and then her own, not spilling a drop in either saucer. When he blew out the candle at night or when he sang to himself over his morning ablutions, pretending she was not the real audience regarding him from their still-warm bed.

“This is apex of your desires?” he said, chaffing her but unable to disguise his curiosity. Unable to say _your desires_ and not scan her face for a blush, a flutter of those dark lashes.

“Apex? How geometrical of you, Jedediah! Yet you must know by now my tastes run toward calculus and topology,” she laughed, making him laugh with her complete lack of concealment of her scholarship and her wit, which was never cutting but always incisive, the most adorable mockery.

“But to answer you, yes, this is what I longed for, to be alone with you, each our true self—to be quietly absorbed and then to so readily put down my pen and know you will lay aside your work to talk to me, to tease perhaps, or confide,” she added. Communion was the word he thought of, that she had said without saying, and he would have suggested it if she had not winced slightly, shifting in her chair, trying to stretch out the leg still lame from the fever; he saw how she bit her lip and took a breath.

“You’re tired now, Mary. It’s off to bed with you,” he said, rising and walking to her side, helping her up with an arm around her waist to help her balance and guide her up the stairs to their room.

“I wasn’t finished,” she said. She didn’t pout, as every other woman he’d ever met might have done, but he heard her stubbornness, remembered her tendency towards impetuous, ardent exclamations.

“I said to bed, not to sleep, sweetheart. You can tell me more when you’re comfortable,” he replied. He saw the smile in the curve of her cheek, felt it in how she leaned more heavily upon him.

“I’m glad we didn’t wait any longer for this, for any of this,” she said and he recalled the relief when the signed writ had arrived, sent up to Boston by canny Matron, who’d tucked in a small note _You’ll be needing this and right quick_ in a crabbed hand. He’d said some of the most heartfelt prayers of his life on his knees that night, while Mary slept, her hand held between his; thanking God and Eliza, Bridget Brannan and Samuel Diggs, Agatha Phinney and Mary herself, who’d said _oh yes_ to his hasty proposal, her voice just above a whisper but not weak.

Glad didn’t seem a big enough word for how he felt but he’d agree with it just the same; he was glad that had not waited any longer, glad they had left Boston together after the small ceremony, glad Mrs. Foster met him every day at the peacock blue front door of the house on Prince Street and not Nurse Mary in the gloomy office Summers and McBurney had left him. Glad they were well and truly married, while the War raged and men died and peace seemed far off once he closed the door on it every morning, peace that he knew was waiting for him every night.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ll wait, I’ll be glad to wait,” Henry said, nodding as he spoke as if she might not believe him otherwise, as if his earnest tone and sincere gaze, his words alone would not convince her. Emma looked away, glad they were near a window, one of the long windows that overlooked the dusty street, for there was someplace to look away to; once, Mama had changed out the velvet portieres that hung there every year, always picking the color from the samples lately come from Paris, the gold fringe three inches deep. The windows had been bare for years now and Emma wondered where the draperies were, knowing Nurse Mary could not have repurposed them to bandages. It was possible the repellent Bullen had sold them but she thought perhaps Matron had stored them away in some chest, aware of the value and when they might be needful again. There was not much to see out the window but she kept looking.

“Emma?”

Hearing him say her name, simply, without hesitation—how thrilled she would have been once! Then, after Ayres’ farm, how relieved, how she would have twisted her hands together to keep from touching his arm, from smiling and letting him see. She wished Nurse Mary had come back to them, her wisdom frank and charitable and readily offered, but though she was not lost as Emma had feared, it was Mrs. Foster who had returned and Emma would have to wait until she could call upon her friend in her new home. And it might be more difficult over the fine tea-pot and matching cups, the little pot of New Hampshire honey, than it ever had been when there was only the last of the chicory in the tin pot and a thousand miles of bandages to wind.

“I can’t—I won’t ask you to wait,” she replied. “For this War to end, for my mother to recover…for a society that would find me an acceptable minister’s wife—I can’t and I won’t.”

She didn’t pout. She didn’t stamp her foot or even rail about the unfairness of it all and she certainly didn’t let there be any hint of temper in her tone. Still, she was taken aback when Henry laughed.

“You think this is about you asking? I thought, you made it clear after Ayres’ farm, I thought you were wiser than that, Emma,” Henry said, walking closer and laying his hands very lightly on her shoulders. She felt the strength of his grasp through her muslin sleeves and she could not look at anything but his dark eyes, blue like night around the moon.

“Henry? What do you mean?” she said.

“If I offer to wait for you, that’s only my choice to make. However long the War lasts, whatever you decide about your family, if you will go to your mother in her illness or stay here, none of that will change for me what I want,” he explained, firm as he could be at his makeshift pulpit. But there was something in the curve of his lips that was gentle and in his expression, a vivid passion she remembered and blushed to do so.

“What you want,” she repeated, knowing she had done as Nurse Mary said and put childish things away, for all she wanted was to hear him say it, even if the words would be all she would take with her when she left.

“You, Emma. I want to wait for you, for you to be my wife. I can’t do anything else, don’t you see?” he said, drawing closer and then surprising her with a soft kiss to her forehead, some sort of consecration.

“It seems it will be forever,” she murmured and again he laughed but with greater humor now and, she could appreciate the change in timbre, a breathless relief that she had not pushed him away or made any better argument. There were better ones, stronger ones—the duty she owed to her family, no matter how she despised them now, her mother’s desperation and her own fears for what Alice might do, the innumerable boys who needed her nursing, but she had set them aside, sure they would torment her enough later.

“What is forever if I shall have Emma at the end? Only a moment,” he said, lifting her chin with one careful finger and bending to kiss her, tender and then nearly wild, as he had been before. But now they were not disturbed by a bullet, a spy, not even by the woman who walked by the open door and watched them, pulling the door shut so quietly they did not notice her, not even the brush of her skirts against the floor.

“Henry! I don’t know what to do!” she cried out, breaking the kiss and then laying her face against his shirt-front, feeling his heart pounding as her own did. His hand stroked down her back once, twice.

“You will, angel.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Wait? How much longer do you mean to make me wait, Byron?” Anne exclaimed. They were alone in the parlor set aside for the officers, a room more regularly available for a tête-à-tête or tryst since McBurney’s ignominious departure and the return of Jed Foster as the chief medical officer; since Foster’s marriage, he had taken a house a few blocks away and did not linger when his work was done. Henry Hopkins and Byron had never quite gotten along and where the young minister went when he was not tending his wounded flock was of a distant secondary interest to Anne. She and Matron Brannan had long ago reached an accommodation about the nature of Anne’s relationship with Byron and she knew the old woman would be sucking her clay pipe in her room, quite content to keep to herself. There was no one to modulate her voice to suit, no reason to spare Byron her full vitriol.

“Darling, beauteous Nan!” he began, stroking his ginger whiskers in a way that had never enticed her though he appeared to think it the height of suavity. 

“Do you think half a dozen endearments will distract me, Byron? You have forgotten who you are dealing with,” she retorted, swallowing the last of the whiskey in her mug. It was just past being rot-gut but supplies were so short she could not risk pilfering any from the stores and the fine bottle of brandy Foster had shared to celebrate his nuptials was long since consumed.

“Anne, my own, please consider—have you not your heart’s desire already? The Head Nurse, as you always ought to have been, running the whole place no matter what Foster thinks?” Byron said.

“And that’s supposed to be enough?” she asked. 

It was something, she couldn’t deny it—to have the pretty Baroness gone from Mansion House, no more meetings Anne must stand through, no more instructions issued in that earnest Yankee voice without so much as a by-your-leave! Mary still came to the hospital, visiting most days, but she kept herself to the chaplain’s side, writing letters for boys and holding the hands of those who would have died alone otherwise. She did no proper nursing, weakened from her long illness, her former grace missing since the fever had lamed her, and Anne found she had softened a little toward the other woman; it had been impossible not to be affected by her clear, shining joy in her marriage and the gift she’d brought Anne, a new pair of kidskin gloves and a small pot of salve for hands chapped and roughened with the endless work of nursing. She’d choked out a thank-you but Mary had interrupted, saying “He told me how you sent him to me” as if it made up for every other condemnation and counter-action Anne had ever taken against her. She thought of Robin and that first bitter dawn in the Crimea and had decided Mary might have been right, that it was sufficient, what she had done.

Anne was Head Nurse now and they all did her bidding—Foster much more reasonable than she had expected and refreshingly intelligent in a way Byron could never be. The bizarre epoch of McBurney had passed like a delirium’s inane phantasy; there was no need to strain to conceal how often Byron came to her rooms at night and for several weeks, it had been enough. Enough until she saw Foster taking Mary’s arm as they walked out the front door, how he matched his steps to her halting gait, the fading sunlight catching the silk of Mary’s new bonnet and turning the bronze color to the warm gold of the circlet on her hand, hidden within her own gloves. That was the first night Anne had intimated to Bryon that they might formalize their relationship and the first he had parried. There had been endless conversations since, engagements with engagement, Anne stymied at every turn.

“You always said it was all you wanted, to be Head Nurse of Mansion House! You know you did and you’ve gotten it, my pearl. I haven’t, still have to answer to Foster, that preening peacock, and he goes home to a proper home, proper meals, Spanferkel any night he wants it most like and Pfannkuchen, spaetzle every day, it’s a wonder he doesn’t explode,” Byron groused. As always, he was more articulate about his culinary appetites than anything else, despite the vast improvement in what the kitchens provided since Miz Gibson had the management of them. 

“I could give you that,” she tried. Well, she’d give him suet pudding and jugged kippers and the preparation wouldn’t trouble her if she had a lovely house like Mary Foster did and the serving girls Foster kept to spare Mary any serious labor.

“One day, my love, one day,” Byron replied, reading a hand towards hers. She wanted to pull hers back. She wanted to slap that look off his face, that expression that said he thought he’d winkled out yet again. She thought of the article in the paper about Hammond General Hospital and Mrs. Gibbons, of the world outside Mansion House and Alexandria, of where she wanted to be and how she’d get there.

“One day may be too late. I’ll not wait forever,” she said evenly, watching his expression. It eased and he stroked his whiskers again, blinking those grey eyes drowsily, the tension gone from his jaw. He was sure of him, the victor again. The fool.

“It won’t be forever, Nan,” he said. She nodded. It wouldn’t be—she wouldn’t let it be.


	4. Chapter 4

“I don’t think you should wait. I think you should go,” Charlotte said.

Samuel nodded; it didn’t mean he agreed, it meant he heard her. They were sitting in the tent that was the schoolhouse, where the children mixed with the adults to be taught their letters, how to write their name, how to make a figure come out even. Mary Foster liked to come here to teach though she had more skill with reading than the mathematics she loved so very much. It seemed to suit her better than being Head Nurse, but that might be less about the change in status than her recent marriage. Dr. Foster had returned to being the CMO and though he had gone dramatically grey at the temples over the past few months, he was likewise far easier in himself and a better administrator, even if there was no one inclined to tell him. Samuel knew he himself now occupied a unique, peculiar position with the man, not only a sort of protégé but somehow a mentor and guide, for all that he had just talked sense about going up to see Nurse Mary in Boston. There was gratitude mixed in with respect, a sense that Samuel might not simply answer “yessir” to anything Jed requested, a clarity that Samuel thought had not been present in the other man for years, that had come with achieving a balance within himself and forgoing most of the multitude of ways men deceived themselves, ones Foster had long availed himself of, but no more. 

Foster had reminded him of the spot at Rush again yesterday and today; he’d offered he’d already written to the Dean about the delays Samuel had faced and had been reassured the opportunity to train was still Samuel’s. Foster had spoken of it frankly, with a faint hint of apology for involving Samuel in his own family affairs, but also with a tone that assumed Samuel could not want anything but to leave Alexandria, heading North to greater freedom, greater responsibility, the possibility, the promise of greatness. “We’ll miss you, Mrs. Foster especially, but I warn you she is a prodigious writer of memorandum and I conjecture that will express itself in a correspondence rife with matronly instructions and possibly some mathematical interludes,” Foster had said, unable to keep from smiling as he spoke of his wife, unable to imagine Samuel could want anything but to become a physician.

Samuel would have agreed with him once but the War had changed him, as it had so many others. And now Charlotte had spoken and her words only added to Samuel’s ambivalence.

“There’s much work to be done here. Dr. Foster and Dr. Hale, they have me assist on every case they can. It’s not like it was in Summers’s day,” he said. The less said of McBurney’s reign, the better.

“You assist. Where you could be the one in charge,” Charlotte countered.

“Not right away,” he replied.

“No, but right now, you’re only helping the soldiers. If you were properly trained, you could run a whole hospital for colored people, your own people first. Treated by their own doctor,” she said, evoking a world he had not thought to dream of. Charlotte had a talent in that direction, imagining a world of such wide dimensions and potentials; he often found himself chastened at how little he had been willing to accept as sufficient. And then he remembered the noose, remembered Aurelia’s arterial blood and Jed Foster’s wandering voice helping him save her, Caleb’s back and there was no word for the emotion that was part relief and part rage, acceptance and rebellion and a deep, confused sorrow that had begun before he could talk. When he looked in Charlotte’s eyes, he saw that same feeling even if he didn’t know what she recalled to bring it into her expression and it made it well-nigh impossible to consider leaving. Leaving Alexandria. Leaving her.

“There’s much that ties me here. People I owe a debt to,” he said quietly.

“You don’t owe anybody anything, Samuel Diggs. You only owe yourself and God,” she replied firmly. Perhaps she was right but it wasn’t changing how he felt.

“People I care for,” he added.

“Do you understand the risk you’re taking? Waiting? You may end up waiting forever,” she said. He observed she didn’t address what he had said about caring for people in Alexandria, but he was more taken aback by her challenge about waiting forever.

“What do you mean?”

“You have a chance right now—and it may not last. If you lose it, you can’t count on it coming round again. If something happens to Dr. Foster, where will you be?”

“What would happen to him?” 

“Samuel Diggs, you know better than this. You know there are a thousand ways this can fall apart. Anything happens to Mary and Dr. Foster won’t be worth a damn to anybody, you know that better’n anyone,” she said, sounding exasperated and tired of needing to be.

“She’s getting better,” he said. Yes, her face was still pale and drawn, but how bright her eyes were. She dragged her left foot and she winced with pain, but when she sang to the men it was in a sweet and full contralto that never broke.

“Slow, mighty slow and you know that too. You remember what she was like before she had camp fever. Anyway, it mightn’t be her, Foster could fall ill himself, get transferred—I wouldn’t trust your chances to Hale or anyone else the Army sends in,” she said. He nodded, admitting the truth of what she said. Hale had already proven he saw Samuel only as a resource to be used for his own advancement and McBurney, besides being a raving madman, had been a typical Army officer.

“It’s not so easy to go, Charlotte,” he said.

“Easy? Who said anything about easy? Nothing’s easy, I find, that I wish were. But you’ve got to think about how much you’re needed, how you are needed,” she replied, surprising him by reaching out to take his hand in hers. Her hand was strong and slender, her palm warm against his.

“We all leave people behind. Doesn’t mean they stay left. Doesn’t mean they won’t follow, in the flesh if they’re able, in spirit if that’s all they can do. We’re not so easily parted from the ones we care about, not really,” she said. Her voice was low and rich, with a depth that usually came after she laughed. A cherishing voice, one he longed to hear more of and not merely remember.

“Guess I’ll have to think on it a little while longer,” he replied, not letting go of her hand.

“Well, don’t wait too long. Waiting has a way of catching up with you.”


	5. Chapter 5

“It won’t be long to wait now,” Bridget Brannan murmured to herself, leaning back in the rocker Mary Foster had pretended to unearth from some hidden corner of Mansion House, as if she herself, matron of the place, had not been over it with a fine-tooth comb from the day of her arrival. It pleased the younger woman to conceal her gift and the rocker was a fine one, the headrest polished smooth, its patina made of the sighs of the many women who’d rested in it. She gazed across the hall and watched the nuns flit.

“Won’t be long.”

 

“I can’t wait much longer,” Alice Green muttered under her breath, shaking out a flounce of her full skirt. It was a dress Emma had left behind in her flight, turned only once, and a manageable color, the green shading to blue so her blonde curls didn’t clash. The note was folded in her reticule, black-bordered, sealed with a blob of wax she hadn’t dared to imprint with a stamp. She’d burned her finger and it smarted in her lace glove. She was due home soon and Mama would need another dose; otherwise, there’d be the screaming again and then the hoarse silence. Alice scanned the lane, praised the Lord for the overcast day that kept her from squinting, and prayed.

“Oh, please, I can’t wait.”

 

“You waited on me? I told you I might be late,” Belinda said to her husband, smiling, hanging her shawl on a hook. The table was even set, a cloth laid, and he’d found some bit of flower for a jug. She was spoiled, late enough, but spoiled nevertheless.

“Worth it,” he replied. “Worth it to wait for you, any which way, Bel. Didn’t seem very long neither, not like it used to.”

She’d picked up the ladle and gotten his bowl filled, the scent alone a pure pleasure, and put it in front of him before he could rise from the table. They’d had a good dinner at the hospital, she’d seen to it, and she’d spoken her piece to Miss Emma, nodded at Dr. Foster as he walked out quick, eager to get home to his own supper. His own happiness. She sat herself down and began to eat, the tin spoon dear as silver.

“Better for waiting, ain’t it?” she asked, enjoying the spices in the stew, the lantern casting its light over the two of them, George content and she the same, the rooms around them their own.

“It’s good, whenever. Waited long enough.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A deleted scene from the "DVD" version of Season 3 That Never Was, Episode 1.

"Oh, she was such a dear little girl and a trial to her mother!" Aunt Agatha said, pushing the plate of freshly baked molasses cookies towards Jed. The dish was dainty, painted with nosegays of violets and lady's slippers, but the cookies were generously sized, sprinkled liberally with castor sugar and redolent of clove and ginger. Mary had been right in saying that her aunt was more accomplished in the kitchen than the sickroom. It had not taken much encouragement from either woman for him to discover the truth of it once the crisis was past and it was clear that Mary would live. He picked up a cookie but spoke before he took a bite.

"A trial?" he asked. 

Mary was sleeping now, having sat up in a rocking chair for most of the forenoon, and Jed had allowed himself to be beckoned to the front parlor by Aunt Agatha and her sweets, having tucked the blanket around Mary's slender shoulders and watched her drowsy dark eyes flutter closed. Her recovery had not been as quick as he would have liked but he gathered her aunt, her minister and her Boston doctor had not expected her to survive; Jed was working to be patient and finding each day it was not as difficult as he'd thought when he was rewarded by her smiles, her hand on his arm, the charming sound of her laughter when he expressed his utter exasperation at Dr. Hale's perpetual incompetence. He had also found Aunt Agatha to be a veritable trove of stories of Mary's childhood, each one a gem, and a pleasant companion to while away the hours Mary slept in the soft white bed above-stairs.

"In the summer, it was all we could do to get her indoors-and picking the burrs from her hair! Oh my! She did her chores as quick as she could, then ran out to the fields and the woods with her little basket," Agatha replied.

"What did she do?"

"She stayed out for hours, collected any number of things. Flowers and leaves, that you'd expect of a girl, but anything else that caught her eye-pebbles from the brook, all sorts of small creatures, snails sometimes, beetles. One time she'd a wee toad in her basket and how proud she was!" Agatha mused. Jed could not help grinning at the image, sure he would have recognized the brightness in Mary's dark eyes then, the determined set of her chin, the dimples that she would not have tried to disguise.

"I cannot think her mother would have cared overmuch to have a toad in the house," he said. He would have been whipped for it himself if his mother had caught him but it seemed Mary had been raised very differently; he'd already heard about the mathematics tutors they'd secured for her when the ladies' academy admitted they were over-matched and the evenings of spelling bees and poetic recitations and roasted apples.

"No, nor the half a dozen others May brought to keep the first one company! Only one got loose in the parlor but it was positive mayhem to catch him and I can't say the lace curtains were ever quite the same. She was very nearly spanked for it, except her father could never bear it. He didn't hold with it in general, but especially May. May was his favorite."

"They were close, then?" Jed asked. He had thought he understood Mary after months of working closely with her, of falling in love with her, but after he'd come to see her in her sister's home and heard the stories of her girlhood, he'd realized she had shown him only some aspects of herself-the practical Head Nurse and the prim Baroness, the ardent Abolitionist. He had only had glimpses of the May she was to her aunt and sister, the daughter she had been to her doting father, the widow whose husband had left her a trunk full of weighty mathematics texts. The more he learned, the more eager he was to know her better, completely, to know May and discover who his Molly was.

"Yes, she was the apple of his eye, though her father was fond of all the children. He hated to travel but they were in Manchester then and he had to come to Boston for business not infrequently. He always brought them back sweets and May saved hers the longest unless it was marchpane. That didn't last a day," Agatha said.

"It's hard to believe she was ever so greedy," he said.

"She was a child, not an angel. High-spirited, curious and smart as a whip, but no stranger to faults. I expect you'll see for yourself soon enough," Agatha replied matter-of-factly.

"I think perhaps she's outgrown most of them," he said, drinking from the cup of chamomile tea Agatha served instead of coffee. He nearly choked on the mouthful he'd taken when Agatha spoke.

"I meant when you have one of your own. I imagine she'll be just like her mother."

"A child?" he exclaimed.

"Why, yes. You're going to marry her, you've made that perfectly clear, thank goodness, and you're both young enough. She was one of six and her mother one of nine. I suppose it's in the Lord's hands truly, but I don't see why you won't have a houseful of children," Agatha explained. What she said made sense but he was still taken aback; he had not wanted children with Eliza though he'd been resigned to them. When they didn't arrive, he was relieved and when Eliza left for California, even more so that there was no living tether between them, no other person he failed by staying in Alexandria. Over the past year, all he'd longed for was Mary herself-to be his love and then his wife. He'd not considered anything beyond that and certainly, since she had fallen ill, all he'd wanted was for her to live. The prospect of a child, their child, was one he'd not considered.

"Do you not want that? For though I'm speaking out of turn and well I know it, I think May would. She did before and she cares for you so very much," Agatha said. The allusion to Mary's first marriage was only the slightest pang compared to the future Agatha was conjuring-a happy family, a loving wife and children, eager little faces with Mary's dark eyes looking back at him, voices piping _Papa Papa!_ rifling through his pockets for marchpane mice and oranges.

"I hadn't considered it," he said slowly. He imagined Mary with a baby in her arms, smiling up at him. "But I do. Want that."

"Then you'll find out for yourself, how naughty a curious child can be, what a trial she is," Agatha said. She said trial, but her tone suggested it would be the greatest delight and he couldn't help but agree.

"I'd like that," he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for sagiow, based on our discussion of how Season 3 might have gone. I know she has a different idea, but this is mine, and I've brought back math!Mary in all her Euler-loving glory. Here, she also has had complications from the typhoid-- I imagine a mild stroke during one of her episodes of fever, which has left her lame.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson, who always has something apt for me.
> 
> EDIT: I seem to have renamed Aunt Agnes "Aunt Agatha." Mea culpa. I mean the same woman although Mary could have more than one aunt! Or perhaps we pretend her name is Agnes Agatha (oh my) and she goes by Agatha at home? I certainly use a million nicknames for Mary; here her family calls her May.


End file.
